As I was doing research for my novel, the term Magical Realism popped into my head. I knew I had heard the term somewhere, so I looked it up and discovered it was the perfect antidote to a problem I was working through related to the story’s plot. For those as ill-informed as I was on the topic
Magical Realism is the literary style in which fantastic or supernatural elements appear within an otherwise realistic world –– and are treated as ordinary, matter-of-fact parts of daily life
Which got me thinking: How supernatural the world actually is.
I know: we modern people know better. What we do not realize however is that our perception of a purely natural world consisting of nothing more than matter an energy is a product of Western Civilization, not an accurate depiction of the world as it actually is. In other words, we who live in America and Europe (and countries affected by the culture they have produced) think the world is devoid of a supernatural or metaphysical dimension not because it is necessarily so, but because we have been trained to think this way. We gave scientific rationalism preeminence as the means by which we understand everything, a way of seeing the world that excludes the possibility of anything beyond the natural before it even gets off the ground. And we are reaping the effects of this, both good and bad, in our modern time. But the rest of the world does not think this way.
And I suspect we all know better. Magical Realism is more than just a literary style: it is the world we occupy.
Do you think anything lies beyond the world of matter and energy? Feel free to leave a comment below.
Photo by Meritt Thomas on Unsplash
D. Patrick Collins 